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Have you ever been in the midst of an extremely busy and stressful time and realized your passion and energy as a leader was waning? It is during those times when you inwardly yearn to “slow it down” and “take a breather.” Please use the following simple steps as a guide to re-energize your leadership life.

1. Take a personal “retreat” time for reflection and discovery.

Timeouts are an invaluable tool for revitalizing your leadership life. The time can be structured to do the following:

Leaders should focus on the two following action steps to maximize and integrate their unique gifts and talents into their leadership life:

Take time to revisit and assess your strengths, talents, and experience.

Take time to build action steps to live out your strengths and God-given talents and abilities.

3. Recommit to basic core values of servant leadership.

As a leader you need to periodically take time to take an up-close-and-personal inspection of your actions in the workplace. Are you living out the basic expression of servant leadership? If you realize your leadership life is on overdrive to get tasks and outcomes accomplished at the expense of people, take a deep breath and recommit to the basic components of good leadership. Just remember, years later no one will remember what you accomplished, but they may remember what you were like as a person.

Renew your commitment to the basic expression of good leadership. Take some time to meditate on the following list of core behaviors:

Be positive.

Be courteous.

Be genuine.

Listen first.

Be engaged.

Be flexible.

Be optimistic.

4. Spend time with a mentor/coach to talk about leadership and to stimulate your own growth and development as a leader.

The best way to improve as a leader is to maintain an ongoing mentoring relationship. If you desire to grow as a leader, allocate dedicated regular time for discussing “real leadership” experiences. The following principles will help you as you get started:

Establish at least two ongoing mentoring/coaching relationships. It will be helpful to select at least one leader from an area outside of your profession.

Build an authentic relationship with your mentors so you can get invaluable honest feedback on blind spots and areas for growth.

Always look for “take aways” you can immediately put into practice.

5. Focus on Others.
It is important to remember that the success of an organization is more about a total team effort than any one person. We should each look for opportunities to encourage the people we work alongside each day. The following are some ideas that can be implemented to encourage and engage employees:

Start your day by challenging yourself to smile and to add value to at least one person during your work day.

Take time to walk around and greet people in their offices.

Focus on “walking alongside others” with a mindset of solving problems and encouraging learning and growth rather than pushing only for outcomes.

Look for opportunities to encourage employees with acts of kindness.

Remind yourself continually that it is not about yourself but the organization; it takes a team to succeed.

Remind yourself constantly you are a cheerleader motivating employees to be engaged. If they are engaged, they will make significant contributions to the life of the organization.

Taking a timeout to revitalize your leadership life will give you a new sense of direction and commitment. Hopefully, the five simple steps outlined above will help you as you take a professional retreat to reflect, plan, and reactivate your passion for leadership.

This is an amazing parable about a successful basketball coach by the world’s standards and an unlikely mentor who knows and understands authentic leadership. This is an intriguing story about their interactions and the mentor’s influence on the coach after he realized his textbook approach to leadership was no longer working. If you desire to be a leader with passion, you’ll learn you must start with understanding your purpose and then leading from the heart. All I can say is this book will make you re-think everything you do as a leader and change your priorities.

This is a powerful book about the true meaning of success. The authors use a story to convey five transformational and life-changing principles about leadership. This is a great resource for those looking for a book on leadership which is easy to read, but also is convicting and will keep you interested to the end.